


Dichotomy

by CloudDreamer



Series: Demon Eyes [22]
Category: Dr. Carmilla (Musician), The Knotley Chronicles - Cassandra (Nortsapa)
Genre: Comfort, Immortality, Off Screen Violence, Unusual Friendships, Vampires, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27029170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: It's taken Dr Carmilla a long time to let their guard down around Chrysanthemum, and even a longer time for her to accept the offer of companionship from such a monster. But they're here now.
Relationships: Dr Carmilla & Chrysanthemum Knotley-Brynjólfur
Series: Demon Eyes [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1698556
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Dichotomy

**Author's Note:**

> Check out @MumKnotley on Twitter for more information on Chrysanthemum! Although she's not written by any of the "official" authors -- Mechanisms, Maki Yamazaki, etc. -- I personally consider her entire story canonical because it's really good. I'm probably going to write more fic featuring her in the future, if you're interested in that! Cassandra's a really great writer and has set up some really fun worldbuilding! <3

She is a study in colour. Her hair cascades across her back in waves of silver that light caresses gently. Her skin is worn, folded into lines, and her face is flush with warmth. She is everything her companion is not, in a hundred thousand different ways, and the two make for a bizarre pair, Carmilla’s head resting on Chrysanthemum’s lap. They are hollow, heart long since stopped and lungs only filling with air when they need it to speak. They almost seem fragile, their frame so slight, and their skin so pale. Chrysanthemum does not look weak, but she is warm. Her hospitality seeps through her every edge, shown in her soft, inviting smile. 

A stranger who approached this place of parley between the two might mistake the two not-quite women, one young and one ancient but both far beyond his years, for easy prey. But behind Carmilla’s thin lines, slender limbs that reach out so far and so easily broken, lies a brutal strength, and Chrysanthemum’s warmth is a hot passion. One that burns bright, if the ones she loves are in danger. They do not take lightly to the monsters of the world. 

Carmilla’s one remaining eye is shut, gently, but she does not sleep. She does not push Chrysanthemum’s hands away from her hair, doesn’t resist the comforting touch. The moment of peace seems so natural to the two of them that it’s hard to believe how carefully negotiated it is. Carmilla is quicker with her assault, with fangs and nails and the force of her body, but Chrysanthemum has reason to despise the vampire, more than reason enough to use her magic. The witch is a pacifist, thankfully, and the two have not directly come to blows. Getting to this point was, nonetheless, a struggle.

Chrysanthemum is an open person, easy to read, and she refuses to live her undying life with walls up. She sees Carmilla’s often cold, occasionally cruel nature as a warning, a demonstration of what she doesn’t want to be. Before they’d met, Chrysanthemum had walked through the wreckage of what Carmilla left behind, when they’d tried too hard to build something to last and fallen so sharply short of that goal. Before that, she’d heard stories. They’d use violence as a tool: not the first, not even the second, but always there. Always.

They are a closed off monster. They tell their stories, pour their heart out in song, but when the music is over, the instruments packed away, their lungs still again, they’re shut off. They worry, they fuss, they work, but they refuse to feel the full weight of living. Because if they feel it now, they’ll be crushed beneath it. All the guilt, all the pain they’ve accumulated over the years, it’s enough that the mere thought of facing it could make Carmilla buckle to their knees.

The vulnerability required to let another person, even someone with her own mess of undying aches and never healing wounds, is, perhaps tragically, astounding.

They sit like that, curled into each other, leaning against a sofa, right in front of a crackling fire. The wood is consumed slowly but steadily. One log collapses from its position on the pure, and Carmilla’s eye flickers open lazily, processes the origin of the noise, and shuts again. The makeup surrounding that eye is smudged from being on too long and as they turn their head to try to get a more comfortable position, which they, of course, can never find, they end up leaving smear of black across Chrysanthemum’s skirt. She doesn’t mind too much.

They both wear clothes of their own design. It’s a strange commonality, that they both find the slow but steady work of pulling thread and needle through layers of fabric, tying them together. The shared interest is perhaps a matter of inevitability for immortals — there’s no point to getting attached to styles that last as long as a candle light out in a storm unless you can replicate it and it’s only natural to hold some measure of affection for one of the few sources of consistency across time — but it’s nonetheless disconcerting. The common ground they find only reminds them of how easily they could become each other. For Carmilla, this is a mark of their failure, weakness, and their monstrosity. It is everything they hold in contempt about their own passage through the universe through such a clear counterexample. For Chrysanthemum, it is a terror. 

Both keep their quiet fear inside.


End file.
